H.S. Baseball: Waldwick legends inducted into 'Ring of Honor' at alumni game

Rosemary Konde, the wife of late Waldwick High School baseball head coach Steve Konde, with (from left) former Waldwick baseball scout Bert Bersch, 1994 graduate Mark DeMenna, 1977 graduate and assistant coach Dave Anderson and current head coach Frank Clark.

WALDWICK — A storybook ending to a game could never have been authored better by Mark DeMenna on a day when he received the ultimate honor from the Waldwick High School baseball program.

DeMenna, a 1994 graduate who holds the school’s single-season record for highest batting average (.604), drilled a two-out, walk-off, three-run homer over the right center field fence to lift the "Older Generation" team to a 19-16 triumph over the "Younger Generation" team in the first WHS Alumni Baseball Game on June 21. Forty-one ex-players donned the Warriors’ Columbia blue and white colors once again.

And it was DeMenna, an All-Bergen County center fielder back in his playing days, who was pressed into pitching duty for his team, but had gotten clocked by Vince Colucci (Class of 2005) for a grand slam that helped the younger squad to a 16-12 lead entering the bottom of the ninth inning. It was then that the veteran players showed their un-rusty mettle by scoring seven runs for the exhilarating win, capped by DeMenna’s heroics.

"I asked the pitcher [Mike Jones, Class of 1996] to give me a chance to hit one out of here and throw me a fastball, and he did, and I was able to turn on it," DeMenna said. "Mike is a good friend of mine, and he grooved one for me. I didn’t want to be a goat today. I had already struck out, and I let up a bunch of runs. My kids and wife were watching the game, so I had to do something positive. The home run was an absolute relief for me."

DeMenna dispatched the fastball quickly over the fabled fence in right-center, an estimated 287 feet from home plate, where he said he deposited a lot of his 25 home runs over a three-year varsity career.

"So today was No. 26," joked DeMenna, who holds the school single-season record with 14 round-trippers. "I’m trying to catch Dylan Ritondale [Class of 2011], who had [a school-record] 27 career homers. But he had an extra year on me, because he started for four varsity seasons."

In fact, Ritondale ripped a three-run home run for the younger team.

Coach Konde remembered

In his senior year, DeMenna was one of the driving forces behind a Waldwick team that started the season with a 26-0 record and received the No. 1 seed in the Bergen County tournament. The Warriors ended the year at 27-2. They were guided by Steve Konde, who was the program’s head coach from the 1984 through 2004 seasons, compiling a .678 win percentage (372-177) and winning 11 league championships. Konde died in December 2011 at age 63 after a courageous battle with cancer.

Fittingly, both men were inducted into the inaugural WHS Baseball Ring of Honor in ceremonies preceding the alumni game. Both the contest and the Ring of Honor were the brainchild of the Warriors’ fifth-year head coach, Frank Clark. The names and numbers of DeMenna (7) and Konde (24) are now displayed on a board on the back of the home plate fence.

"I started thinking about having this alumni game during my second year at Waldwick," Clark said. "I thought it would be a good idea to start an alumni game after I was through a four-year cycle of players. We always tell the players that we’re not just a program, but we’re a family. I wanted them to look forward to coming home and playing ball for one day a year."

"I did not have the privilege of knowing coach Konde," Clark added, "but after hearing all of the positives about him from his ex-players, and people associated with the program like Dave Anderson [Clark’s current assistant coach and Konde’s first one in 1984], I wanted to do something special for him, to remember all the great things he did for the student-athletes at Waldwick."

Konde’s wife, Rosemary, and her two daughters, Katie and Kristen, were there to witness the induction, and two of her grandsons, Matthew and Luke Eitner, each threw out the "first ball."

"The Eitner boys look a lot like coach Konde," said DeMenna.

"If coach Konde were here, he would be very humble in his acceptance of this honor," said DeMenna, who was Konde’s assistant coach his last five seasons (2000-04). "It’s no secret that my dad worked a lot, and coach Konde disciplined me like a father would discipline a kid. He would invite me over the house for a spaghetti dinner, and we would talk baseball. He was a rare breed. He was old-school baseball, and I appreciate very much for what he did for my baseball career. He left this earth way too early."

All about the baseball

DeMenna, always the humble person, said about his day of honor, ""It was more of a Waldwick baseball program day. It was waking up the ghosts of a baseball past to come down and really just have a good time. To see these guys from the 1970s and 1980s and reconnect was just a great experience for me, having grown up in town. I used to watch them play baseball in the semipro leagues."

"Mark DeMenna has been great for Waldwick baseball," Clark said. "He is the president of the youth baseball program in town, and he had such a great career at Waldwick High School that we wanted to honor him. His walk-off home run proves that he is a big-time player, a clutch player. It was absolutely fitting that he won the game for his team. It was unbelievable that it came down to that, and he walks off in victory."

Coach Konde would be proud of his pupil. In 2011, DeMenna’s only season as head coach at Don Bosco, he led the Ironmen to one of their most magnificent seasons, with a 25-1 mark and the Bergen County championship. DeMenna since has moved on to Bergen Catholic, where he has been head coach for the past two seasons.

Joe Jannelli (WHS Class of 2003) and Dan Freeman (Class of ’07) got together three days before the alumni game and chose sides, serving as managers of their respective teams, with Jannelli guiding the "senior team."

"The best part was seeing the older guys play, and I thought the experience would pay off," said Jannelli, explaining why he wanted to manage the older team.